Energy efficient bulbs affecting your health?

[GoldenRivet]

thoughts?

I've done my own research on this concept and drawn my own conclusion. I have done what uncle sam insisted and filled my house with these things... but this report has me second guessing that choice.

[Jimbuna]

Not used in the buna household because SWMBO is adamant they give off yellow instead of white light.

[SteamWake]

CFL's are safe unless you break one. Then you have to call out a HAZMAT team practically. They contain vaporized mercury

About CFL efficency and lamp life. There are HUGE differences from one manufacturer to the next. A cheap chinese knock off lamps life may actually a little less than a regular incandescent with a nasty fall of of lumen output in the first 100 hours or som (some nearly 50%). A good quality CFL will leas years and only fall off some 20-30% output over its lifetime. Like everything else you get what you pay for.

As to the CRI (Color Rendering Index) fluorescents are typically closer to the blue green than the red spectrum. Although they can be had up to nearly 5,000K color temprature (nearly white light).

But honestly CFL's are a passing fad soon to be upstaged by LEDs.

About the EMI or electromagnetic 'waves' try this little trick. Unplug your amplified speakers, now touch it to your fingertip. That bzzzzt you hear is 60 cycle 'waves' coupled through your body. Its everywhere cannot be avoided and been that way for decades. The long term effects are as yet really un known but it seems to be begnine.

I'm all over this topic as its a part of what I do for a living.

Any questions I'm the expert

[GoldenRivet]

I have noticed they take about 3 to 5 seconds from switch ON to light ON

[GoldenRivet]

my opinion is that $40ish in energy savings over the life of the bulb is not significant.

when you consider that in 130+ years the incandescent light bulb has undergone almost NO changes... that means they got it right the first time.

when LED lights are priced more in my budget i'll be placing them all over the house.

[SteamWake]

Originally Posted by GoldenRivet

I have noticed they take about 3 to 5 seconds from switch ON to light ON

More like 1/2 a second just seems longer .

Your used to instant (1/30th of a second) on for incandescents.

Yet again another place where LED's are superior.

[GoldenRivet]

Originally Posted by SteamWake

More like 1/2 a second just seems longer .

Your used to instant (1/30th of a second) on for incandescents.

Yet again another place where LED's are superior.

I walked into my kitchen last night and hit the switch and had time to walk 7 feet to my refrigerator before the first of three lights came on...

I didnt know i was that fast.

EDIT:

in fairness to these little squiggly bulbs... this only happens when they have spend an hour or so OFF

[SteamWake]

Originally Posted by GoldenRivet

I walked into my kitchen last night and hit the switch and had time to walk 7 feet to my refrigerator before the first of three lights came on...

I didnt know i was that fast.

EDIT:

in fairness to these little squiggly bulbs... this only happens when they have spend an hour or so OFF

Yea some of the cheaper lamps at their end of life cycle will have a little trouble striking at times. The gasses in the tube arent just as energetic as they once were. Bet the same one comes on first every time.

[tater]

I only use these in limited circumstances.. My goal is pretty much MORE likght, not cost. So an old fixture takes a 60W bulb... I put the biggest CFL that will fit, maybe I get 150W worth of light.

On my low-voltage track lighting, I have been using "halogena" bulbs (halogen/xenon) sinc ethe 35W bulb makes as much like as a 50W. That means I can put more fixtures on the track. I have an LED, too (4W), and if was not so damn blue, I'd replace 'em all with LEDs (my transformers are 300W, so the lower the bulbs, the more I can run on one circuit).

[STEED]

They give me headaches and I'm not alone on that one.

[SteamWake]

Originally Posted by tater

I only use these in limited circumstances.. My goal is pretty much MORE likght, not cost. So an old fixture takes a 60W bulb... I put the biggest CFL that will fit, maybe I get 150W worth of light.

On my low-voltage track lighting, I have been using "halogena" bulbs (halogen/xenon) sinc ethe 35W bulb makes as much like as a 50W. That means I can put more fixtures on the track. I have an LED, too (4W), and if was not so damn blue, I'd replace 'em all with LEDs (my transformers are 300W, so the lower the bulbs, the more I can run on one circuit).

LEDs are available in a wide spectrum of colors. Not just red blue white but mixtures of everything in between.

Actually the LED you have is probably a pretty good CRI but your so used to the 'warm' red end of the spectrum they now seem blue to you.

[tater]

Originally Posted by SteamWake

LEDs are available in a wide spectrum of colors. Not just red blue white but mixtures of everything in between.

Actually the LED you have is probably a pretty good CRI but your so used to the 'warm' red end of the spectrum they now seem blue to you.

No, it's quite blue. I usually buy broad spectrum bulbs, so most regular bulbs in the house are "Reveal" types (which indeed look blue next to "soft white" (I've experimented ) but are in fact nice.

[Sammi79]

Hmmmm. No, sorry really sounds like absolute *expletive* I'm afraid. 'Dirty electricity' indeed - a smooth sine wave at 50Hz - Well all mains power in the UK is exactly that : a 50Hz sine wave pushing and pulling 240v so practically every electrical cable that runs from the mains socket creates that field to a greater or lesser extent depending on the dampening effect from the cable sheath. I believe in most of Europe it is 60Hz but at 110v or thereabouts? I don't know what the specs are in the US, but I assume after that video that it runs at 50Hz. Ever since the invention of radio, signals of varying frequencies have been passing through living things.

People live under/near power lines carrying 45,000+v at this same frequency which create huge EMF fields (like you know if you listen to the radio in your car and you drive under one), try taking that little 'magic box' under a pylon and see what it says.

Yes mercury is dangerous, so is flouride in your toothpaste, care should be taken when disposing of these bulbs as with batteries, microchips, microwave ovens, refridgerators and many, many other readily available consumer products. In reality unless you regularly eat lightbulbs or whole tubes of toothpaste you are not going to come to any harm!

Ultra Violet radiation is possibly the only real concern you have here, and that's only because people demand specific 'colours' of light - "I want my light to replicate daylight"... well daylight contains UV radiation. The colours achieved by CFLs are a product of phosphor compounds on the inside of the tube, they can be modified to produce any wavelengths we desire, and can be designed to nearly completely eradicate the emission of UV frequencies (only it won't be a nice blue-white daylight shade)

Don't let reports like that fool you, It seems to me sincerely to be some kind of media scare tactic for which the reason escapes me - possibly the makers of incandescant bulbs are running at a loss? or possibly because the people who control the people who produce these broadcasts want you to be scared, add it to all the terror etc.

[SteamWake]

Just an aside. The last commercial plant (in north america) producing incandescent lamps closed this year (many jobs lost).

As to the motivation about this report? I'm going to presume that A:Scare tactics draw in viewers and B:The push is on to move to LED.

[XabbaRus]

can't say I have had any issues with them and we have them all over our house.In fact we have no conventional bulbs left.

I'm wondering if some of the issues are more psychological than real.